1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to devices, tools and methods used to clean mats and screens. More particularly, the present invention relates to automated machines used to sanitize industrial and restaurant mats and various screens to include air filter screens.
2. Description of Related Art
Several major industries currently rely upon mats and filters to improve the sanitary conditions of the workplace and to enhance the working environment for workers. Floor mats are used in food service, manufacturing and health care settings to reduce leg and lower back strain, decrease the incidence of injuries due to slipping and fatigue, limit biological and chemical contamination and pest infestation.
Air filters are used to improve the air quality of residences and work areas, and to reduce biological and/or chemical contamination and cross-contamination in houses, apartment buildings, factories hospitals, clinics, hotels, restaurants and numerous other locations.
Conventional equipment and techniques used to clean mats and filters include the awkward manual manipulation of a mat or filter and the use of a hand held spraying nozzle. The conventional mat cleaning techniques are especially wasteful of water and time consuming.
The manipulation of often heavy mats in prior art is unacceptably prone to generate back strain in workers. Furthermore, cross-contamination is even more likely to occur, where chemical agent and organisms originally located on a mat or filter are splashed or rubbed onto a worker's clothing, wherefrom the worker proceeds to promptly transfer the collected agents and particulates to a food handling, medical or other work area.
The worker's safety is additionally imperiled by repeated exposure to chemical cleaning agents intentionally used in the conventional cleaning process. An inappropriate risk of worker injuries, due to accidental slipping and falling while handling and spray cleaning mats and filters, is also evident in most contemporary mat and filter cleaning operations.
The realities of industrial mat cleaning practices include illegal and/or unacceptable actions, such as placing mats and screens into industrial dish washers. The inappropriate use of these dishwashers to clean mats and screens leads to worker lifting injuries, damage to the washing machines from jamming and the unintentional sponsorship of bacterial growth in the mats and screens. This bacterial growth is encouraged by the hot and humid internal environment of most industrial dish washing machines.
The illegal use of car washing facilities to wash mats and filters typically allows the release of volumes of grease and other contaminants into the water supply and the proximate ecology. Pedestrian pathways, sidewalks, driveways and parking lots are routinely polluted by such illegal activities on a routine basis today.
The benefits of hygienically clean mats and filters are well known and fully documented. The limitations of prior art cleaning equipment and techniques have unfortunately inhibited the efficiency with which mats and screens may be properly cleansed, and in some cases conventional practices actually degrade the sanitary quality of a work place, public area or dwelling.
There is, therefore, a long felt need in various public, domestic and industrial settings to provide an apparatus that reliably and easily cleans mats, screens and air filter screens.